As the commercial significance of the Internet increases, business-to-consumer (“B2C”), business-to-business (“B2B”), and other electronic trading networks have become increasingly more prevalent. Each electronic trading network typically involves a set of users or trading partners (such as, for example, individuals, organizations, businesses, or electronic marketplaces) that communicate among themselves in order to complete business transactions.
However, in a typical electronic trading network, business transactions are restricted to users or trading partners who are subscribed to that network. That is, the electronic trading network limits the availability of business transactions to only those users or trading partners who are subscribed to that network. Consequently, this limits the commercial success of a user or trading partner associated with an electronic trading network, by minimizing the presence and availability of the user or trading partner to a specified trading network. This inability to provide a user or trading partner with the ability to conduct business transactions on a larger scale like, for example, the Internet is undesirable.